“Journalism is Not Dead”
By Essie Newton and Sophia Larimore
Emmy-award winning journalist, Yolanda Joe, spoke at the recent Illinois Community College Journalism Association Conference, which was hosted by Moraine Valley Community College.
Joe recounted a story from her childhood when she wrote a set of poems and gave it to her grandmother. Her grandmother took the set of poems and stapled them together, then placed the gathered poems on the shelf next to books by other female authors.
(photo taken by Sophia Larimore)
“That made me think I’m supposed to be a writer,” Joe said about her childhood story.
“The skills that you get as a journalist, you can do anything with it. So you can do journalism for a minute,” Joe finished her speech. “Then you say, you know what? I want to be a communications director, vice president of communications. You could be the press person for the high hotels. You could go into government.”
The ICCJA Conference also had an awards ceremony for participating community colleges across Illinois. All schools that attended the conference received at least one award.
(photo taken by Essie Newton)
ICC’s Harbinger Student Media won 8 awards. Grace Parker and Grace Zeithhammer won first place in Podcast. Charlie Ashenbremer won second place in Front Page Design, Division 1. Noah Markunas won third place in Sports Photo, Division 1. The staff at Harbinger Student Media won third place in Multimedia Story. Three ICC students received honorable mention: Brennen Tuma for Front Page Design, Division 1, Brock Alkire for News Story of the Year, and Micah Weidner for Feature Writing, Division 1, and for Reporter of the Year.
Students attending the ICCJA also got the chance to hear from professional journalists and communications specialists at several different workshops.
Some of the workshops include a presentation about how to write effective leads by Karen Town, a Communications Specialist for Moraine Valley, and a presentation on how photojournalism works by Glenn Carpenter, the Visual Media Coordinator at Moraine Valley.
“Ask people questions. Find out why they are doing a particular thing,” Carpenter said during his presentation. “It may be a surprise, it will give you photo ideas.”
“It’s the few sentences that are going to pull your reader in. The best leads are enticing. It’s your first impression,” Town said about lead sentences in an article. “It’s like when you walk into a party and you made sure you dressed a certain way and you make sure you are either late or early, depending on what you thought was a better first impression. Your lead is your reader’s first impression of you and of your story.”
What a nice article about the ICCJA conference! It was such a pleasure meeting all of you and the rest of the conference attendees.
I feel great about the future of journalism after spending time with the student writers at the conference and hearing them share some examples of their writing skills during my workshop.
I know Moraine Valley was proud to host this wonderful conference and support this organization.
It was great meeting you Karen. I learned a lot in your session!